My Disgusting Condition

I am writing this email to tell you all that I appreciate your inquiries about my health. As you may have heard, I am in the hospital.
I apologize for not contacting anyone sooner. You will have been confused. I am not usually so private. However, my condition is too appallingly disgusting to discuss.

I sincerely appreciate your sympathy cards, flowers and concern. However, it would be best for everyone if no one visited me during this time. Trust me, my ailment is not something that merely makes one cringe in sympathy. Every disgusting thing you can think of is practically dinner table talk compared to what I’ve come down with!

So please, don’t ask me about it. Definitely don’t ask where the affected area lies. I’m not kidding. I didn’t even know I HAD that part of anatomy! You don’t want to know either. Yup, you’ve got one too! Though luckily, it’s healthy, or you’d be where I am: With tubes shoved up there, painful hourly palpitations of the area by the roughest nurse in the ward. The oozing! The drainage! The gas-masked attendants with their bandoliers of tools! Etc. LOL.

I don’t want to be brave, but the prognosis for this type of thing varies widely. I am assured that the medical team here at Infernal Christ is doing their best. Those of you who know me well know I’m not the type to go lightly! In some of the other rare cases, the victim succumbs in four weeks and has to be buried in a stainless steel coffin so the stench doesn’t permeate through the ground into town aquifers.

Then again, some of the few sufferers have practically polkaed competitively for the rest of their lives. A shocking percentage of survivors, in fact. Those lucky ones merely carry a small, tender scar that must be nursed in secret. I was always more of a mazurka type, but I pray for polka now, I can tell you!

Wonderful people that you are, you will want to know how you can help, what you can do. Meals are of little use to me, though I am constantly compelled to swallow objects. It’s a side effect of my medication.

My poor gerbil, Huxtavious, is well attended to, as he was quarantined with me. Gerbils can be carriers of my condition, though they express no symptoms or, it seems, sympathy.

Do not by any means stop by my house. I’m afraid my ferns will just have to be a casualty of this sad affair. They will die of thirst, or by fire, if the public health department gets its way and torches my abode in the name of training new fire fighters. So be it. My house is not contagious. However, the memories of the (many) EMS workers who responded to my (Very Disgusting) complaint were so traumatized (I repeat: It Is Too Disgusting to Mention) that they’ve sued to have it burned down for threrapuetic purposes.

In short, I love you all dearly, but please do not visit or even call. (I find it difficult to speak from shame.) I hope that you all we see me in a few short weeks, dancing merrily in the Market Street beer gardens. However, if the worst should happen, you should probably start drinking bottled water, and/or move out of town, driving at speed with headphones blasting happy music in your ears because the Post-Mortem Sounds…I lack the strength to go into!